


Introducing: Shenanigans

by Aja, earlgreytea68



Category: Shenanigans (Original Universe), Time Ravel (Original Universe)
Genre: Antarctica, Boston, Dramatis Personae, F/F, F/M, Gen, Hipsters, M/M, Multi, Original Characters - Freeform, Original Fiction, Other, Podcast, Shenanigans (Original Universe) - Freeform, an endless series of rooftop bars, and our own fictional podcast, cowriting: or how we broke each other and ended up with fifteen fics, we made our own fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 09:33:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11757003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aja/pseuds/Aja, https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: We were going to write a story. And we thought we knew where it was going and who it was about.





	Introducing: Shenanigans

**_The Introduction_ **

**We were going to write a story.** And we thought we knew where it was going and who it was about. And then, after 70,000 words, we realized there were whole possibilities we hadn't even considered. And we spent several weeks trying to write an ending, and all we did was write so many different versions of different endings that finally, at the end of it, we thought, “Why don’t we just never write an ending?”

So here’s a universe where there are many different endings. Here’s a universe where you can have anything you want. Basically, we set out to write canon, and we ended up just writing a bunch of fic. For a non-existent canon. There is no canon. The author is dead. Have at it.

 

**_The Setting_ **

**Bᴏꜱᴛᴏɴ, ᴛᴡᴏ ᴛʜᴏᴜꜱᴀɴᴅ ᴀɴᴅ-ꜱᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ-ꜱᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ. Hɪᴘꜱᴛᴇʀʟᴀɴᴅ.** An endless wellspring of crowded bars serving esoteric drinks. A group of former theatre nerds and friends who met in college and cling to each other in that adulthood tipping point when you really need your friends.

 

**_Dramatis Personae_ **

**Eʟʟɪᴏᴛ** , who is, in all universes, a lover of shenanigans, a hipster schemer, who most of the time works hard to cultivate a certain refined and privileged aesthetic, either knowingly or unknowingly, consciously or unconsciously, harmlessly or harmfully (it depends on the universe). Early-mid 20s, a graduate of Emerson who works as a business analyst, or maybe something in social media, or maybe something he hates, until sometimes he realizes what he really wants to do is direct. Sometimes he’s Puck, and sometimes he’s Machiavelli. Sometimes he’s a really good friend, and sometimes he’s too self-absorbed to really listen to other people, and sometimes he moves past that. Sometimes he drinks only pink cocktails. Probably he’s really hot because every character develops a crush on Elliot; he’s especially hot when he’s singing “Genie in a Bottle.” But Elliot himself doesn’t think much about sex until someone unexpectedly lights him up (or rubs him the right way).

There’s a lot that Elliot could stand to learn about himself and his relationships. He met Nicholas at a pop-up corn dog stand during freshmen orientation and they’ve been BFFs ever since. Elliot and Jonah and Nicholas all lived together during their senior year, but things got... complicated. Sometimes they’re still unraveling exactly why.

Sometimes Elliot ends up with Jonah. Sometimes he ends up with Nicholas. Sometimes he has a fling with Blake. Sometimes he ends up alone writing a blog about aesthetic dating. Sometimes he becomes a pageant coach and creates an assembly line of beauty queens. Sometimes he has a baby with Jane and it’s a wacky babyfic (it’s a baby the new-fashioned, non-sex way). Sometimes he ends up with Tony Leung. Sometimes he’s already with Nicholas. Sometimes he was with Nicholas. Sometimes he was having unwise flings with Jonah. Usually he was with Caroline. Almost always his relationship with Jane is probably his least complicated: they’re BFFs.

 

 **Jᴀɴᴇ,** who is, in all universes, much cooler than you. You wish you were as cool as Jane. Her aesthetic is flawless and her pop culture references are always on-point. Elliot loves her desperately for this. She dresses almost always entirely in white, may have internet-dated a member of Big Bang, drinks only gin fizzes with real egg white, and has a special talent for smoking where smoking is not allowed. Sometimes Jane works for Google and her moving away disturbs the entire balance of the group, or of Elliot, which is sometimes the same thing. Jane is almost always the best at keeping Elliot’s shenanigans in check. She has also introduced him to Gackt. Jane sometimes battles tech industry sexism and racism and has like 80 other stories of her own going on at any given moment that her friends know nothing about—and probably neither do you.

 

 **Nɪᴄʜᴏʟᴀꜱ,** who is, in all universes, a dreamer who wants to save the world. Usually he’s a pediatrician. Although he’s good at socializing, he can find it wearying because he’s an introvert at heart. He likes comfortable things, has an even keel, and actually despises confrontation and will go out of his way to avoid it. (This is probably because he had a massive confrontation with his very conservative family and had to move across the country in the wake of it; he still talks to them, politely and distantly). Elliot thinks he can be too serious, and needs some lightening; Elliot is not wrong, and Nicholas often loves Elliot’s light-heartedness and silly shenanigans. Nicholas compartmentalizes his life to an extreme degree—he has to in order to do his job and come home to Elliot happily hogging his couch at the end of the day (in universes where he comes home to Elliot happily hogging his couch at the end of the day). Nicholas also sometimes serves as a weighty counterbalance to Elliot, telling him when he’s gone too far; but sometimes Nicholas also is bad at this—we might even say oblivious—and Elliot can run amok. Nicholas usually loves Blur and craft beer. Sometimes he ends up with Elliot. Sometimes he ends up with Caroline. Sometime he ends up with a charming waiter named Max. Sometimes he ends up with Josh Lyman. Always he has a cat named Ian Purrtis who’s the true star.

 

 **Jᴏɴᴀʜ,** who is, in all universes, fun with a side of showy. His style tends toward smoking jackets and red wine. Jonah grew up rich and was disowned by his parents when he came out as gay. He worked hard and built a life for himself, eventually earning an acting scholarship to Emerson. It makes him a couple of years older than the rest of the group. A successful actor in the Boston acting scene, Jonah has been disdainful of parental attempts at reconciliation. Jonah genuinely loves people and everyone basically loves Jonah. Sometimes Elliot loves Jonah more than any of those other people, but sometimes Elliot is exasperated by Jonah, who is nearly always exasperated by Elliot—affectionately or otherwise. Sometimes Elliot’s exasperated by Jonah because he doesn’t realize how much he wants Jonah, and sometimes Jonah’s exasperated by Elliot because he can’t stop loving him despite his faults. Sometimes Jonah calls Elliot on his bullshit when no one else will—and sometimes it makes a difference and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes Jonah ends up with Nicholas. Sometimes Jonah ends up with Blake, or random rentboys, or in a platonic life partnership with his BFF Hazel, or no one. Sometimes Jonah is the Henry Higgins of sex and just coaches all of his inept friends on how to improve their love lives. Always he’s more serious than he first appears.

 

 **Cᴀʀᴏʟɪɴᴇ,** who is, in all universes, cooler than you. Also in all universes an enthusiastic co-conspirator with a playful sense of humor and the all-important sense of aesthetic that Elliot admires, which in Caroline’s case often is expressed through touch and posing. Passionate about her chosen art of photography, Caroline is still looking for exactly the right way of expressing it. Most of the time, it isn’t that Caroline isn’t ambitious, it’s that there’s just too much to love. Caroline is emotionally perceptive, easy-going, and forgiving, but by no means a pushover. Usually, Caroline and Elliot had a brief fling in college, that resulted in one of the world’s most amicable breakups, and the two remain close. Sometimes Caroline ends up with Nicholas. Sometimes Caroline ends up with a hot barista. Sometimes Caroline ends up with her BFF Blake. Sometimes Caroline ends up with everyone, okay, she’d be perfect for everyone. Sometimes she even gets to show her work at fucking Whitney Biennial, that’s how amazing Caroline is.

 

 **Bʟᴀᴋᴇ,** who is, in all universes, possibly a sociopath, and _ridiculous_ , in, like, the very best sense of the word. He has a reputation as a jokester, and is in fact very funny and very good at it, but he’s very serious about having a career in entertaining, and sometimes it’s easy to think he’s always joking about everything when in fact he’s very serious about it—in the way that sociopaths are casually serious about setting your house on fire, lol. Blake hosts weekly-monthly parties at his parents’ house, where he still lives (nobody can remember how frequently the parties happen, they just...happen). The parties are always centered around some dramatic piece of performance art; sometimes Elliot is enthusiastically part of this performance art. Blake is usually in hot pursuit of Jonah as a mentor, believing him to be a genius at networking (he’s not wrong). Usually no one takes him seriously, because Blake. Sometimes his interest is completely misinterpreted. But that means sometimes Blake ends up with Jonah. Hey, the sex is good. Sometimes he has a fling with Elliot. Maybe sometimes he ends up with his BFF Caroline. Sometimes he makes it out to California and ends up as Bryan Fuller’s kept poolboy. Probably he ends up as _someone’s_ kept boy, but only if it gets him somewhere good.

 

 **Hᴀᴢᴇʟ,** who is, in all universes, the Hermione. A committed geek who’s slightly more serious than the rest of the group, she has an unerring laser focus on topics that often bewilder Elliot as being of little interest. But Hazel’s a born producer: she has big dreams, is ambitious, and wants to be a creator, even though she usually has a very boring job and tends to obsessively pursue whatever her latest creative scheme is. (Sometimes Hazel and Elliot are opposite sides of the same coin.) Sometimes Hazel has a boyfriend named Tim. Sometimes Tim is creepy. Sometimes Tim is God.

 

 **Kᴀᴛᴇ,** who is, in all universes, the group’s enigma. She’s really just a quiet, nice person, and the running joke is that it’s easy to forget her for that reason, but probably she’s a pastry chef spy.

 

(Also there used to be **Eᴠᴀɴ** and **Aɴɴᴀ**. They left to go to New York. They have an on-again, off-again relationship and sometimes they show up. And sometimes they don’t. Evan wishes the gang would come to see him in SoHo more often; sorry, Evan; sometimes that happens, but more often it doesn’t.)

 

* * *

 

 

**_Time Ravel: A Podcast_ **

 

**_The Setting_ **

 

 **New Aɴᴛᴀʀᴄᴛɪᴄᴀ** , far, far into the future. Most of the ice caps have melted and what remains of Antarctica is a slushy outpost at the end of the world. Small barge settlements have sprung up across the continent; one of them lies near what was once Deception Island, and it’s there our hero has journeyed with one of the world’s rare collection of books—rare because they are books, any books.

 

 **Sᴇʙᴀꜱᴛɪᴀɴ (Sᴇʙᴀꜱᴛɪᴇɴ) Yᴀᴛᴇꜱ** , a wary, watchful bookseller, nerdy but cynical, yet still more optimistic than a guy living at the edge of the world in a post-apocalyptic wasteland should probably be. Sebastian doesn’t get involved in politics, until he does, and doesn’t involve himself with his neighbors and their petty crises, until he does.

 

 **A Mʏꜱᴛᴇʀɪᴏᴜꜱ Mᴀɴ** , a man out of time, a trickster, a reprobate, a vaudevillian from another era, who finds his way to Sebastian’s bookshop one day.

 

* * *

 

_Join us, won't you?_

**Author's Note:**

> Just what it says on the tin: this is our attempt to make sense of a five-month-long co-writing project that sprouted many heads and tails and turned into an entire universe. We hope you enjoy. :)
> 
> There are two main fics we're contributing to this universe. The first is [Alter Ego](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11763891), an Elliot/Nicholas shenanigan. The second is [Like Some Sort of Hays Code Love Scene](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11763933), an Elliot/Jonah shenanigan. We'll probably be adding more fics to this playground in the days to come. In the meantime, if you feel inspired, please feel free to dive in and join us.
> 
> Time Ravel art created by Caroline Dougherty, a.k.a. [cloven.](http://cloven.tumblr.com)


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